Blog

25 Feb 2015

Easing the Stress on Your Email Server

Everyone has experienced this problem –

You have important files to share with someone. You attach them to an email then click send. A few minutes later, you receive an automated email message from your server stating your email cannot be sent because of the file size. “Great,” you say to yourself with a grimace. The first thought is to send the files by a flash drive, but you cannot easily meet with your receipt due to distance. The second thought is to zip the files, but you recall what happened last time – it took too long and did not work the first few attempts. The third idea, setting up an FTP, would require a lot of work for IT and sending one file or two is not sufficient use for an FTP. Google Docs or Dropbox? Sometimes companies have policies regulating their use, and you would rather not use your personal email account. Send it by mail? Wait a minute… the Internet was created to solve this problem not make it worse? Have the days of sending files in interoffice envelopes returned?

Meanwhile in the IT Department, the director is trying to resolve the same problem from a different angle. The large amount of email attachments is tying up the already stressed email server. Due to traffic, the director must reduce the file size limits on attachments to regulate traffic. In the meantime, the department calculates how long the server will last until the budget for the server upgrade is approved in a few years. FTPs are not the best solution for most file sharing, and Dropbox and Google Docs raise their own security issues.

However, there is a solution to satisfy both the IT department and the end users: sending files via secure hyperlinks.

The Share Feature in Elvis DAM enables users to send files via secure hypertext links (HTTPS) no matter how many files or the file sizes. The Share Features embeds hyperlinks to the assets/files directly in Elvis DAM Server. By leveraging hyperlinks, email is not restricted by the file sizes. Your recipients receive the files, and you do not suffer the headache of dealing with large files attachments. Your recipients receive the files faster enabling quicker feedback and happy customers. They can even preview the files before downloading to make sure that they don’t download a 2GB before realizing that it was not the file they needed.

IT is happy. Large attachments are not causing stress on the email server. The help desk receives fewer calls complaining about the email server. The department can budget for the server later because Elvis DAM is cheaper than buying a new email server.